Welcome to Helsinki!

Well, I'm here! After a 14-hour travel ordeal across two flights, I have now been in Finland for approximately 29 hours. Summary: so far, I love it. More details: read below.

Getting here certainly wasn't easy. Lessons learned to date:

1. Avoid Heathrow at all costs. While the shopping is good, you're forced into constant alertness during your layover (rather than vegging out in a haze on one of the uncomfortable seats) because they won't tell you your gate until 30 minutes before the flight. Also, the new 'one carry-on bag only' rule resulted in my starting a fight at security between the nice security guards who wanted to let my oversized bag squeeze by and the nasty mean security guard who wanted me to go ALL THE WAY back out to the main entrance to check it. It's a bad sign when your first experience in Europe makes you long for US airports. Fortunately, my team (the nice guards) won.
   
2. They don't tip in Finland. I only found this out about 20 hours after the airport shuttle driver gave me a long befuddled look when I tried to give him 10% for his trouble lugging my 200 pounds of luggage into and out of his van.
3. Go ahead and pack boring comfortable shoes when you come to Finland. Unlike many other European countries I have been to, which all made me feel like some kind of peasant girl due to my unsophisticated clothing and strictly basic sense of shoe style, Finns dress for style and comfort, and the majority of women appear to be wearing flats. Sure, flats are in right now, but still. I love this country already.

That covers my impressions up through my first hour in the country. Everything after that has basically been a fight between me and jet lag. I managed a nice workout in the hotel gym (which appears to be approximately 1/3 the size of the nearby saunas), then took a short walk around the city.

Finns really do want to live it up during these days of mild weather. Every cafe and restaurant seems to have outdoor seating filled with people happily laughing and eating as if the days of 21-hours-of-darkness aren't fast approaching.

My walk did reveal a few cultural differences:

• Design of common household items is sassier. Check out this knife block found in a store next to my hotel:
  
• Some foods here have interesting ingredients, such as "mojo". I thought "mojo" meant sex drive or sex appeal, a la Austin Powers, but then what is "mojo gratin"? Maybe everything is better with cheese...
  
  
  
  

Finally, I started work in the Helsinki office early this morning, where I was laughingly admonished for coming in early (8:30am!) Most or all of the ~30 consultants and ~5 staff came over to personally introduce themselves to me, and in the afternoon they held a coffee and cake (mmmm...cake!) to welcome me. Incredibly nice people. Also, stylish, as evidenced by my sleek new black desk (abutting two other desks -- no cubes or offices for lowly consultants here) and the gorgeous flowers they placed on my desk. It would all be enough to make me look forward to going to work tomorrow...if I weren't so darn sleepy.